Cymbeline – review

Cymbeline performed in Juba Arabic by the South Sudan Theatre Company at Shakespeare's Globe

Though bombs are falling on South Sudan after a border dispute flared up last month, this Cymbeline was conceived in joy, six months prior to its declaration of independence last July. It starts with not one, but two celebratory dances, and ends with the actors grabbing every groundling hand they can reach. The world's youngest nation seems delighted to be here and, played with this much heart, even Shakespeare's most rambling romance becomes irresistible.

Unsurprisingly, after almost three decades of civil war, this is a Cymbeline that sides with its underdogs. It cheers "the fledgling nation of Britain", as the production's initial synopsis puts it, against the might of imperial Rome. Not that the South Sudan Theatre Company champion Cymbeline's Churchillian resistance out of deference to their hosts; his subsequent police force come dressed in the pressed khakis of British imperialism. It's power in general that's under suspicion here.

As the Roman armies invade, King Cymbeline's plucky Brits – dressed in zebra skins to the Romans' tiger print – march into battle with an unorchestrated, arrhythmic clatter. They resemble nothing more than Captain Mainwaring's Dad's Army, defending their land with purpose, but none of their enemy's poise. Such is their spirited amateurism, they might as well have saucepans for helmets.

In fact, the whole thing is played with the same quality of dressing-up box tomfoolery, sending itself up wherever possible. Weapons are made of tin foil. Ghosts are played in white sheets. Tears of grief come in hammy, high-pitched wails. Horror is shrieked and victory erupts in foolish dances. Everything is make-believe and mess-about.

Tonally, it's not dissimilar to a Kneehigh romp or even, in its willingness to puncture its own drama with ridicule, the work of Forced Entertainment. We understand the tragedy, even as we laugh at its portrayal. Waking next to the decapitated corpse she believes to be her exiled lover Posthumus, Imogen nearly trips over the crudely stuffed dummy, before collapsing into overblown shrieks of grief. The more we laugh, the more she implores us to take it seriously.

Most of the play's individual villainy is similarly undermined: Imogen's stepbrother Cloten – usually bitter, tormented and desperate for the throne – becomes a bumptious fool seeking a playmate and a play fight. Iachimo's attempts at seducing her after a bet with Posthumus aren't sleazy, but clumsily persistent. He creeps into her bedroom – dastardly, not devilish – and steals her bracelet as proof to resounding pantomime boos, then leaves with a broad cackle. This might flatten the swirling narrative, but it's so utterly infectious that it hardly matters.

All fits neatly with the language used. Juba Arabic is the street slang developed when British imperialists banned Arabic. It brings the high and mighty right down to Earth, since courtiers and shepherds share the same language. It's also the neutral lingua franca among South Sudan's various tribes and this is whole-hearted, full-bodied populist theatre that sides with people over state. Cymbeline's final cry of peace is followed by an eruption of the national anthem and the genuine jubiliation that spreads from cast to audience encapsulates the whole.